Silversword

by Phyllis A. Whitney

  He stopped me a few feet from the tree. “Caro, I’m sorry. You’ve had too much thrown at you for one day. I can understand now why you didn’t come before, but you’re from the mainland, so you don’t know how different things are in Hawaii. In some ways being an American here is a veneer. For a while being Western was very popular, but now the pendulum is swinging. You can’t know what’s going on underneath. Maybe something that’s part of a new Hawaii, and not altogether American. Something Hawaiian first.”

  Right now I didn’t care about that. A certain single-mindedness was growing in me.

  “I’ll tell you something,” I said. “My Grandmother Elizabeth believes that my father was murdered.”

  David was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I’ve always had the feeling that might be so myself. The atmosphere at Manaolana was too strange for the accident theory.”

  His words chilled me. I’d hoped for contradiction, dismissal. He accepted the idea too readily, and that was all the more frightening. But it was my mother I must concern myself with—not some awful deed that belonged to the past. My concern about the crater and what had happened there had only to do with my mother. There was nothing more I could say—or wanted to say.

  Near the camphor tree something moved again, and I listened intently. “There’s someone over there.”

  David had heard the sound too, and he ran back to the tree and into the bushes beyond. But whoever had been there was already crashing away into the darkness, and the night was quiet again, except for buzzing insects.

  David rejoined me. “Whoever it was is gone. Let’s go back inside.”

  I sensed excitement in him again. It was as though part of him wanted whatever danger might exist to come into the open where he could deal with it. Another part held him back and wasn’t so sure. “Danger,” of course, was too strong a word to use in this peaceful Hawaiian night. Probably the explanation was simple and casual—of no consequence. My mind took a contrary turn. “Peace” wasn’t exactly the right word to associate with Hawaii’s turbulent past.

  I let it all go and when we were halfway across the side lawn and on neutral ground where no one could hear us, I asked a more ordinary question.

  “David, do you know why Tom O’Neill seems so set against my being here? I can’t see him as a pressed flower.”

  “Why not? He was part of it all. Sometimes I’ve wondered if he was protecting someone and knows a lot more than he’s ever told. Noelle always seemed like the enchanted princess in the tower to me in those young days. I’d have loved to rescue her. Perhaps I still would.”

  If that was so, then I might have an ally.

  We were close to the house now, and he put a hand on my arm, so that we halted, still in the open. Someone stepped out from the shadows of the dimly lighted lanai and came toward us. It couldn’t have been whoever had hidden behind the camphor tree, since that person had run off in the opposite direction. This man was dark and slim, and David recognized him.

  “Hi, Koma. What’s up?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you. You were talking over there, so I didn’t want to bust in.”

  “Caro, this is my friend, Koma Olivero. Caroline Kirby, Koma.”

  “I know. Hello, Caroline.” He used my name easily, and his voice carried the musical lilt that I associated with Hawaiian voices. A cliché, perhaps, but there was a natural melody in the Hawaiian-born who wasn’t haole.

  We went onto the lanai together, and I could see him more clearly. His skin was a warm brown, his face wide at the cheekbones, with a generous mouth, unsmiling now. Reflected light shone in eyes that were almost black, and his hair was dark and thick and unruly, blown by the wind.

  “So you’re Keith Kirby’s daughter,” he added, and the words sounded almost like an accusation.

  “Did you know my father?” I asked.

  “He couldn’t have,” David said. “He wasn’t here then.”

  Koma spoke directly to David, and I felt as though I’d been dismissed. He might not have known my father, but I had the strong feeling that he didn’t like whatever he’d heard about him.

  “There’s a meeting being called tonight, and I’m on my way. Maybe you should come, Dave. But first we need to talk.”

  David said, “I’ll see you in the morning, Caroline, when we go to Ahinahina.”

  I told them both good night and went into the house.

  The long living room was empty, the fire on the lava-rock hearth dying. I picked up a magazine and sat down, paging through it idly. If I went straight up to my room I’d only start too many thoughts stirring around in my head, and night thoughts were apt to be anything but cheerful or hopeful. Scott was always there, waiting to move in, much as I wanted to push him away. San Francisco had an unexpected pull for me too. At least I’d been on familiar ground there—and not in the tossing seas that troubled Manaolana.

  Even a fireplace reminded me of sitting before the hearth in our first little house across the bay, holding hands and planning our wonderful future. I’d believed that I was as important to Scott as he was to me, and in the beginning we’d have lovely times together. Charm was something Scott had in overabundance, and he’d loved to please—providing it wasn’t too much trouble. But charm without sensitivity eventually wore thin. It was quite possible to love and despise at the same time.

  When we were married, Grandmother Elizabeth had given us a handsome sum that I didn’t want to accept. Scott thought it better to take it, rather than hurt her feelings. He’d welcomed gifts from her on other occasions, once to pay for a trip he took with his latest love. And of course he had been eager to accept the job Grandmother Elizabeth offered him at the Prince Albert—even though I’d opposed it. We’d needed more than anything to be clear of obligations to her.

  There! I was doing just what I’d feared. Thoughts of Scott always wound up unhappily. Better to think of my father, though that could be painful too. Once I’d sat on his knee before this very fireplace, and he’d built wonderful images for me in the naming logs. Maui was full of memories of him, and of my mother the way she’d been. Only now, David’s words, with all their unsettling possibilities, were there at the back of my mind to torment me with questions I wasn’t ready to face.

  No one came to join me in the room and distract me from my own thoughts, so the house began to seem too quiet. I tossed the magazine aside and climbed the steep white stairs to the upper floor. The door of my room stood open, and a band of light from the hall showed me Marla Docket curled up in the dark on the window seat.

  “Is that you, Caroline?” she called. “I’ve been waiting for you. We need to talk.”

  Those were the same words Koma had spoken to David, and somehow they had an ominous ring.

  I touched the light switch and lamps came on in the room. This rather secretive meeting made me feel all the more uneasy.

  5

  Marla had changed to pajamas and a blue-patterned Japanese yukata. She looked plump and comfortable and good-natured on the window seat. The casement was open, and the night a lustrous ebony behind her. From outdoors a breeze ruffled the straight brown bangs across her forehead, and the neatly cut points of hair moved against her cheeks when she turned her head, giving rather an exotic effect. Calculated? I wondered.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, I wondered what Marla’s life had been like. Had she ever been in love? Why hadn’t she married? When I was little, she’d been good to me, and with her liking for children she should have had babies of her own.

  “My room’s up here too,” she said conversationally, as I pulled a chair near the window. “So we have this floor to ourselves. Mother’s knee makes it difficult for her to climb stairs these days, and of course she wants Noelle near her, so their rooms are down below. Nobody can hear us up here. We can say anything we like.”

  This sounded like an invitation, but I hadn’t anything I needed to open up with my Aunt Marla.

  “Secrets?” I asked, remembering the
word David had used.

  Her smile had an impish quality that I recognized from the past. There had sometimes been an appealing sense of mischief about Marla, which was probably why children liked her.

  “If you want to call it that,” she said. “There’s something I’d like you to do, Caroline, if you ever get up to the crater. Something you can make right. Maybe I’m even a little superstitious about this.”

  “I don’t suppose I’ll go up there, but what is it you want me to do?”

  She didn’t answer directly, but waved a hand toward the bed. “I brought you one of my books. It’s over there.”

  I went to pick up the thin volume that lay on the spread. The jacket was bamboo green and lava black—with a striking splash of crimson. For fire, of course. I read the title: The Legend of Pele.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll enjoy reading it.”

  Marla had a habit of tilting her head at times, as though she listened to something far away that no one else could hear. I had no idea what she heard now as she went on dreamily.

  “You remember that Pele’s home was once in the crater of Haleakala? She made it a place of great fires and poured lava down its sides.”

  “Yes, you used to tell me stories about Pele,” I said.

  She looked pleased. “I’m glad you remember. Of course, it was the sea goddess who drove Pele away. She sent a water dragon to destroy her rival. But Pele’s spirit never died, and it flew away to make its home on the Big Island, where she could stir up more volcanoes. So now Haleakala is dead and cold.”

  “But Pele comes back sometimes, doesn’t she?” I said. “To look over her old home?”

  “Right! And she can appear in all sorts of guises—a wrinkled hag, or a young girl. Even as a child. I think I’ve seen her up there myself a couple of times.”

  If anyone could, I thought, it would be Marla, who had always been able to stretch her imagination in any direction she pleased.

  I leafed through the book. “Did David Reed do the photographs for this?”

  “Yes, he appreciates the old legends as much as I do. And he can do imaginative things with his camera. There’s one picture in there of the crater that looks like Pele emerging out of the mist. He’s helped me with my research too. We were down at the Historical Museum in Wailuku today getting something for my next book.”

  I paused in my page turning to study a stunning color photograph of Kilauea’s fires—Pele’s present home. “David’s very good, isn’t he?”

  “He’s one of the best. Of course, I wish Noelle could illustrate my books with her drawings and paintings. But though she still paints lovely watercolors, she can’t be counted on to concentrate and fill assignments.”

  “I can remember pictures she painted for me,” I said.

  Marla sighed. “I know how hard this must be for you, Caroline. It may help a little if you can remember that she really is happy most of the time now. Just think of the pain she has missed.”

  “Without pain she isn’t alive. And she still looks for her child.”

  “But never for long, since she’s easily distracted. She’s like a child herself.”

  I wondered if I dared open the subject of the crater incident with Marla, but I didn’t know her well enough yet, and this wasn’t the time.

  “Do you try out your stories by reading them to children, the way you used to read to me?”

  “I read them to Noelle now,” she said quietly.

  I put the book down. “Is there any hope for her, Marla?”

  She shook her head sadly. “We don’t think so. There are moments when she’s almost back to what’s real—and then she escapes just in time.”

  “What do you mean—just in time?”

  Marla left the window seat and stretched her body beneath the yukata—the stretch of a plump cat. “You know, of course, that she’s been like this ever since the accident in the crater. Sometimes I think she knows what happened there and has run away from it. She wasn’t as badly hurt as I was. So maybe it’s better for her not to remember. Better not to stir up sleeping serpents, Caroline.”

  “You’ve said that before. What are you talking about? What serpents?”

  “It doesn’t matter, so long as they stay asleep. But Noelle isn’t what I came to talk to you about.” She sat down again and waved a hand. “Go over to those shelves across the room—the ones with books and ornaments. I don’t want to touch what’s there.”

  I went to the row of shelves. “What am I supposed to look for?”

  “There’s a piece of lava rock on the middle shelf that your father brought down from the crater.”

  I picked up the gray-black rock and found it surprisingly light, almost like pumice. Its sides were rounded and pocked, as though it had been tumbled along with other rocks that hadn’t become part of a solid, molten mass.

  “That rock should go back to the mountain,” Marla said. “Will you take it there?”

  “Why should it go back?”

  “Because Pele’s anger is to be respected. Everyone knows that trouble comes to the person who steals a rock from Pele. Of course, your father laughed at the legend, the way he laughed at everything. He had to dare Pele by bringing that rock down on an earlier trip—just to prove that nothing would happen. He wasn’t from Maui or he’d have known better. We’ve all paid for what he did—Keith with his life. Maybe the bad luck will go on and on if the rock isn’t carried back to where it came from.”

  “If you really believe this, why haven’t you returned it yourself?”

  “It needs to be someone of the same blood. So you’re the only one now who can appease Pele and ask her forgiveness for what your father did.”

  There was something eerie about the way Marla’s voice dropped to a whisper as she spoke, and I knew that she was deadly serious. Not liking the rock in my hand, I set it down quickly.

  She went on, her low voice weaving its spell. “Remember where you are, Caroline. This is Maui. There are mysteries here that men have never touched—good and evil. I don’t want to deny any of the old powers. Protect us, Caroline—please. You were born here. You are Keith’s daughter.”

  But I had grown up in the modern world of the mainland, and I hadn’t learned to listen to the voices Marla seemed to hear. She saw doubt in my face, even though I didn’t put it into words.

  “It really did happen, didn’t it?” she challenged. “There was damage to all of us—and it’s still going on. In Noelle. Even in my mother and in me. Perhaps in Tom O’Neill too, since he’s never had what he wanted from life.”

  “What do you think Tom has wanted that he doesn’t have?” I asked.

  She looked a little sly. “Of course you were too young to know what was going on—in fact, it was before you were born. What Tom never stopped wanting was Noelle. He was in love with her when we were all very young. Though of course after Keith appeared, Tom didn’t stand a chance. He’s never married, and after the accident Noelle was lost to him in other ways. But Tom doesn’t matter anymore—he belongs to the past. What interests me a lot more is the present, as I know it interests you. I was sitting here by the window when you and David came up to the house. Koma was waiting, and he and David went off together. What are they cooking up now?”

  “If you heard them, Marla, then you know as much as I do. Koma wanted to talk to David, so I came inside.”

  “Yes, I gathered that. And they’re still out there, since I haven’t heard their cars leave. Koma brings trouble. He cares too much about the old ways and I hate to see David get involved.”

  “But you were just talking about the old ways as though you believe in them, Marla.”

  “I was talking about the old gods. Koma wants to throw the haoles out and go back to the land for the people. That would mean fishing and raising taro and living in houses with grass roofs! There are some who can still do that, but I don’t think it’s for Koma. He just likes to stir things up because of the anger that’s always eating at him. I su
ppose what happened to his mother still sticks in his craw, so he doesn’t like white skins. Do you remember Ailina?”

  The name seemed vaguely familiar. “I seem to remember someone singing …”

  “She’s the one. But you wouldn’t know about the rest, of course, and maybe that’s just as well.”

  With that tantalizing remark, Marla walked toward the door.

  “If Koma doesn’t like white skins,” I said, “how does he happen to share a house with David?”

  “David’s different. He can get into other people’s skins. He’s on Koma’s side in a lot of ways. They became friends when they worked together as park rangers.”

  As she stepped into the hall, Marla paused, listening. Then she said, “Come along with me. Maybe something’s going on that we should know about.”

  She turned to the right down the long hall, and I followed her, curious now, and at the same time uneasy. The main stairs by which I’d come up were on the left of my bedroom door, but there were other, narrower stairs at the far end of the house. Marla hurried toward them and leaned upon the guardrail at the top.

  Voices came up to me—Tom’s and my grandmother’s. I didn’t want to listen, and I started to turn away.

  Marla’s smile was derisive. “I suppose your Grandmother Elizabeth taught you to behave properly and never eavesdrop! But you’d better forget that, since they’re talking about you—right now.”

  When Tom O’Neill spoke my name, nothing could have budged me.

  “Caroline’s bad luck, Joanna,” he was saying. “You don’t want her to get too close to Noelle, do you?”

  “Noelle carries her own protection.” Joanna spoke sadly.

  “Better be smart before it’s too late. Caroline Kirby isn’t that little Caro you remember anymore. No more than she’s Noelle’s Linny. Let her stay a few days and then send her home.”

  “I suppose that’s what I must do. Yet sometimes I almost hope …”

  “What you hope isn’t possible, and it might even be dangerous—for Noelle. She’s better off the way things are.”